Strategy - Who cares? What's it worth?

Strategy has gone through ups and downs, ins and outs historically.  From the graduate school course I've taught on it, it has cycled through periods where companies spend massive resources gathering data, reporting up in endless detail, and creating strategy, all the way to periods where some companies rejected the idea of having one at all (we seem to be closer to that, now).


An article in Harvard Business Review said "It’s a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else" (Collis & Ruskad, 2008, p. 83).

So what?  What's lost if most people in the organization couldn't say what the strategy is?

A couple of important things - coherent decision-making at the right levels, and alignment.

Coherent decision-making means that everyone who might have to make a decision knows the direction and priorities.  That reduces waste of precious resources (like the leader's time!), and costly errors.

Alignment is a subtler benefit.  When everyone knows where the organization's heading, and why, and that direction and strategy mean something to the people in the organization who have to make it happen, better engagement happens.  The work means something, so people stick around, give more of themselves, care about quality and customers, and work together to achieve more.

Employee engagement is at an all-time low.  Some estimate that most people would leave their current jobs if they could find another one tomorrow.  What sort of performance does that mean?

So, if an organization doesn't have a strategy, or its members could not say what it is, where do you start?

That's in next week's blog...

A quirky sort of strategy research

For several years, I’ve been teaching courses on Strategy in a graduate business school.  Over a hundred learners have all done essentially the same project:  Based on the readings and research, evaluate your own organization’s strategy. What needs changing, and why? What are the consequences and opportunities?

The learners are all working leaders, often senior managers in some significantly large organizations; they roll their sleeves up and get it done every day. 

So over the years, I’ve started to see some of the same patterns again and again.  When things go badly wrong with strategy, they seem to follow one (or more) of a few specific patterns.

I’m also part of two different networks of consultancies, with Resource Associates (about 300 nationally) and with Association of Independent Business Consultants (over 1000 globally).  In “members only” discussions, I’ve floated these patterns of mistakes, asking if others have seen these – and they have.

In my consulting practice, addressing strategy with clients, some of these same patterns have to be overcome. 

When working for / with some well-known organizations over the last 15+ years, the same patterns were there, too.

So between direct, hands-on experience, polling other consultants, teaching, these patterns of costly mistakes keep popping up.

These patterns have predictable outcomes in how an organization operates, competes, and adapts.  Those outcomes can be very, very costly.   And some fairly simple (not easy, just simple) guidelines can keep organizations clear of these errors.  (These are forming into a "white paper" to be published this summer).

Next week – What is it about strategy that can go so badly?